November 27, 2007 - Quebecor World, the leading print media company in North America, has set a new benchmark for print finishing speed and productivity at its Augusta, Georgia facility.  "We established a new world record of 665,401 catalogs produced and mailed in a 24-hour period," states Pat Quinn, Vice President and General Manager of Quebecor World Augusta.  The new record, which involved gathering, binding, trimming, inkjetting, mailing and shipping, was achieved using a Muller Martini Supra saddle stitcher. 
"It's a matter of the right equipment, the finest people, and the right training," says Mr. Quinn
in explaining how setting the world record was made possible by a combination of the technologically-advanced Supra stitcher, the dedicated professionals at Quebecor and industry-leading support from Muller Martini.
Quebecor World Augusta is a market pacesetter in the gravure catalog market, producing high quality products for some of North America's largest catalogers.  There are a total of 16 saddle stitchers on the floor at Quebecor's Augusta plant, including the new 30,000 c/hr. Supra, which was configured with 16 pockets.  "Our goal was originally 16,000 to 20,000 products per hour, but due to the performance of the Supra stitcher and the great training our operators received from Muller Martini, we were able to set the record at 27,725 net good products per hour," continues Pat Quinn.
The Muller Martini Supra saddle stitcher represents the worldwide state-of-the-art in stitching equipment, engineered to bring speed and efficiency to print production operations while creating stitched products of exceptional quality.  Due to its robust overall design, its versatile 416 feeder, Supra is capable of providing a level of performance no other stitcher on the market can match.    Supra's innovative stitching system with patented two counter-oscillating stitcher carriages (Boxer principle) results in reliable stitching even at the maximum speed of 30,000 books per hour and results in a low-vibrating, low wear and smooth run of the stitcher mechanism. 
Set-ups and changeovers on the Supra saddle stitcher are incredibly fast and cost-effective thanks to automation of the most important axes and the ability to save job data for repeat jobs.  The size input automatically synchronizes the feeders, the stitching machine and the trimmer. 
The product size (head and foot trim as well as spine length) are automatically preset in the crank trimmer.  Supra's new high-precision single copy trimmer can trim products up to 13 mm (1/2") thick and has no limitations on page swings and accommodates numerous blow or bind-in cards as well as gimmicks or product samples.  Books are accurately aligned in the infeed and pulled through the crank trimmer with a double gripper.  The upper and lower knives mounted on cranks trim the books at full speed and superior trim quality is assured even at top speed.  To meet the demands of a wide variety of growing operations, the Supra saddle stitcher features a modular building-block design, and, the stitcher can be configured with up to 30 feeders depending on specific production needs.